Drilling down into August’s year-to-date stats issued by the Calgary Real Estate Board (CREB®) it’s interesting to note that inventory in some high-value neighbourhoods is at higher than normal levels.
Most notably, City Centre and communities in the West seem to have the higher than normal listings, as well as the South East. The West is roughly defined as the area west of Crowchild between Glenmore and 16 Ave NW. The South East is loosely all communities east of the Bow River and south of Glenmore Trail.
Chief Economist and CREB® spokeswoman, Ann-Marie Lurie attributes what she called year-to-date listing gains in the South East to the large amount of new construction happening, particularly south of Stoney Trail in new communities such as Mahogany, Walden, Auburn Bay, Seton, Legacy and the continued build-out of Cranston.
City Centre according to the CREB® map goes beyond the scope of downtown with some multi-million-dollar penthouse condos. City Centre also includes many of Calgary’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, such as Mount Royal, Rideau and Roxboro, Elbow Park and to the north, Crescent Heights, Briar Hill/Hounsfield Heights and St. Andrew’s Heights.
The West area on the CREB® map stretches out to Springbank Hill, Discovery Ridge and Aspen.
These areas of Calgary are the exceptions, however, as overall there were fewer residential listings in the rest of the city which has served to keep real estate prices from crashing through the floor. Specifically, new listings year-to-year in August rose by just half a percentage point with 2,759 homes listed last month. The very modest rise in listings helped to offset the drop in sales, which fell by 4.6 over August 2015. The benchmark price last month fell by 4.2 to $440,200.
Really, it could have been worse.
Most of that drop in sales occurred in the attached home and condo apartment market segment, which in and of themselves fell by 12. and 5, respectively. Fewer people are buying higher-density products and going for the detached, single-family home. Sales of these homes was only down by 1.4 compared to the activity in August 2015.
The benchmark price for single-family product last month was $503,200 which is only 3.3 under the August 2015 benchmark and very much the same benchmark price as we saw in July of this year.
Condo apartment prices are similar to what they were in 2013, meaning any gains the market saw in a 48-month period have disappeared. Sales figures for condos are even worse, going back to numbers seen in 2003 when many of today’s beautiful new condo buildings in Calgary weren’t even built.
What this means for buyers
With so much disparity between the number of listings and where prices are headed based on inventory, CREB® is consistent in its message to consumers to research specific districts and consult with their professional real estate agent to get good intel on what’s happening in specific areas.
City-wide data in this ever-changing market and sweeping generalizations should be discarded in favourite of area-specific information.